Press Play to hear Michal Malinowski speaking on the Storytelling Museum of Poland on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.
A storyteller - shaman from Altay in Siberia at the festival of Intangible Heritage organized by the Storytelling Museum.
Michal Malinowski writes...
The Storyteller Museum is a unique institution devoted to the collection, preservation and promotion of oral heritage from all over the world. Our mission is to save the vanishing examples of intangible treasures, acquaint new generations with the oral tradition of a variety of cultures and revive the custom of storytelling. Nonetheless, our attention is also devoted not only to tribal storytelling but also to contemporary trends in oral expression. The Museum has been the leading place in Poland to developed the storytelling revival movement. We have organized Storytelling Festivals and workshops in our location and other places in the country
The Storyteller Museum has an innovative approach to collecting and exhibiting different cultural artifacts by applying the latest achievements of digital technology. Our interests pertain not only to narrative texts but also to other indirect elements, such as gesture, movement, dance, sound, music, costume and body coverings. We have been engaged in work on various exhibitions, elaborating unexplored topics, such as African Griots: Local Knowledge -Global Polish Oral Tradition, A Panorama of European Oral Tradition, The Storyteller Museum supports all initiatives of transcribing oral traditions into tangible platforms. For such an end it has initiated a special program called Indigenous Writers, aiming to give the opportunity to tribal people to enunciate their oral art, so that it can be preserved in various forms, such as books, audio-visual recordings and museum digital displays. We are currently working on the book "Folktales from Burkina Faso"
Michal Malinowski - biography
Folklorist, writer, storyteller, computer graphic artist, born in 1966 in Warszaw, graduated from Academy of Fine Arts in Lausanne - Switzerland diploma in painting and computer graphics, started his carier as multimedia artist designing animation movies in Switzerland and Japan. Simultaneously discovered his passion for writting which he has realised as animation script writter and free lance journalist for various magazines in Europe and Asia. In 1997 traveled to Papua New Guinea where discovered traditional storytellers and decided to create the new type of museum based on interactive technology presenting oral traditions and intangible heritage. In 1999 quit Japan in the goal to extend his knowledge in cultural studies and went for one year to Folklore and Mythology Department at Harvard University. After retourned to Poland and opened in 2002 the Storyteller Museum in the house he built himself.
He has contributed to the beginning of Polish storytelling revival mouvment , organizing since 2002 various storytelling events ( storytelling evenings, workshops and Festivals in the Museum venue and all over Poland). He performed his storytelling programs life on stage, libraries, schools or since December 2007 regularly on the III Chanel of the Polish National Radio. Recently performed in the storytelling festival
Press Play to hear Esyllt Harker speak on stories out of Welsh History and land of Wales. on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.
On the teller...
Esyllt Harker is a versatile singer and storyteller, performing in English and/or Welsh. Her material draws primarily on her strong Welsh roots - myth, legend and history mix with gleaned fragments found in the features and memories of the land. She is noted for her easy interweaving of the Welsh and English languages, making for effortless understanding. She also moves smoothly between spoken and sung material, bringing a new - but age old - inflection to her telling. She has performed frequently at Beyond the Border International Storytelling Festival, and was part of the second Rough Guide to Wales tour in 2002. She tells in theatres, festivals, museums, schools, parks, shopping precincts, living-rooms, castles, on clifftops..........
Mae Esyllt yn cynnig ei gwaith yn y Gymraeg ac yn Saesneg.
To learn more about her Website check out the Welsh Storytellers at http://www.bodyandvoice.co.uk/
Press Play to hear Jay O’Callahan speak about learning about Stories by telling to my Children on the Art of Storytelling with Children.
Jay O’Callahan writes…
I’m at work right now on a story commissioned by NASA, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration to celebrate its 50th anniversary. As I create the NASA story I’m aware I’m using all of the knowledge I gained telling stories to my own children. As I told stories to my children I began using repetition, rhythm, changing my voice, using a gesture here and there and inventing situations that involved struggle or risk, When my son Ted was about nine months old I’d make up little songs and rhythms to make him smile. Just making my voice go up high and then suddenly come down delighted him.
One night Ted was sitting in a soapy bath and I read him some of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. He laughed at the sounds.
When Ted got older I read books to him like The Gingerbread Man and discovered that he loved the repetition running through the story.
Run, run fast as you can
You can’t catch me I’m the Gingerbread Man.
I began reading one of Richard Scary’s book in which there was a character called Pierre the Paris Policeman. The line was, “Pierre the Paris Policeman was directing traffic one day.” I would sing that line with a French accent and lift up my hand to stop an imaginary car. The voice and accent brought the character alive. That was an important discovery. And if I read it in any other way it wasn’t Pierre and Ted would say, “Say it right.”
After my daughter Laura Elizabeth was born I told both my children “hand stories.” I’d take one of their hands, look at the palm of the hand and let a line, a bump or a curve in the hand suggest an image and I’d begin the story. It might go like this. “Once upon a time Ted saw a pink cloud resting by a tree. The cloud looked sad so Ted went over to cheer it up.” I was dreaming aloud and characters and images would spring to mind. I imaged that’s always happened to storytellers. I liked telling the hand stories because they were quiet and personal and my children liked being the hero and heroine. Some of those hand stories eventually turned into the Artana stories which take place in a mysterious land where two children, Edward and Elizabeth are the hero and heroine.
As I was telling to my children I learned the importance of a listener, particularly a listener with the sense of wonder and delight. My children listened me into being a storyteller.
Now as I work on this complicated story about NASA I use the knowledge I gained from my children. I ask myself this question: What is wondrous about NASA? And I’m on the alert for compelling characters and the risks they take and the struggles of their lives. I try to incorporate rhythm and repetition; I use a voice to become a character and find that a gesture helps bring the character alive.
As I shape the story and as it grows, I’m using the listeners. The listeners draw out mysteries in the story that I would have missed without them. Here I am back to the beginning.
Biography
Jay O’Callahan grew up in a section of Brookline, Massachusetts which was called “Pill Hill” because so many doctors lived there. The 32-room house and landscaped grounds were a magical atmosphere for a child’s imagination to blossom. When Jay was fourteen, he started making up stories to tell to his little brother and sister to entertain them.
After graduating from Holy Cross College, a tour in the Navy took Jay to the Pacific. Returning to Massachusetts, he taught and eventually became Dean at the Wyndham School in Boston, which his parents had founded. “In the summers I’d go off to Vermont or Ireland to write. I also did a lot of acting in amateur theatre, and that’s where I met a beautiful woman (Linda McManus) who later became my wife. When we had our first child, I left teaching and became the caretaker of the YWCA in Marshfield, a big old barn on a salt-water marsh. That gave me time to write and to tell stories to my children. When I decided to call myself a storyteller, it was like getting on a rocket.” Within three years, Jay was telling stories in hundreds of schools and in addition he was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra to create and perform Peer Gynt with the orchestra. His stories were broadcast on National Public Radio’s “The Spider’s Web,” which brought Jay national attention.
Jay was now publicly telling stories he had created for his children. His stories were filled with rhythms, songs and characters as diverse as Herman the Worm, Petrukian, a medieval blacksmith, and the Little Dragon. Orange Cheeks, inspired by a time Jay got in trouble as a little boy, was the first of his personal stories.
One of his most popular stories, Raspberries was born when Jay’s son Teddy was four. Teddy banged his shin outside their cottage and was weeping, “I broke my leg.” Jay told a story full of rhythms to cheer Teddy up.
Jay was also beginning to tell stories to adults. In 1980, while on vacation in Nova Scotia, he sat on and off for a month in the kitchen of an old man and a blind woman. Out of that kitchen came the story of The Herring Shed. “I realized then that part of my gift was to sit down with ordinary people where they were comfortable, listen, and later weave a story together so that others could enjoy it. The process still amazes me: one year I’m in a kitchen in Nova Scotia and a few years later, I’m performing The Herring Shed to a thousand people at Lincoln Center.” Time Magazine called The Herring Shed “genius.”After the Herring Shed came Jay’s Pill Hill stories for which is was awarded a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship. The Pill Hill stories are loosely based on his boyhood.
Storytelling has brought Jay around the earth. “The storyteller of old got on a horse. I get on a plane, parachute into a community and I’m part of its life for a while before moving on to the next one.” Jay has told stories to students at Stonehendge, to adults in the heat of Niger, Africa, to theatergoers in Dublin and London and at storytelling festivals in Scotland, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. His stories have also been heard on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. Jay’s stories also include commissioned works like The Spirit of the Great Auk, Pouring the Sun, Edna Robinson and Father Joe.
When he isn’t on the road, Jay runs a writing workshop at his home. His other interests include reading everything from Walt Whitman to Herman Melville to Flannery O’Connor to Emily Dickinson. And he enjoys listening to jazz, classical music and opera. “I love Maria Callas. Her singing touches a joy that’s very deep.”
Jay has just finished a political novel called Harry’s Our Man, and is creating a story commissioned by NASA for its 50th anniversary.
Press Play to hear Michal Malinowski speaking on the Storytelling Museum of Poland on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf. A storyteller - shaman from Altay in Siberia at the festival of Intangible Heritage organized by the Storytelling Museum. Michal Malinowski writes... The Storyteller Museum is a unique institution devoted to the collection, preservation and promotion [...]